sooner or later
every man must stop fighting
the stars.
sooner or later
his life will run him down
and he will lose
what he holds most dear.
the one thing
that has kept him going
given him reason during the day
and comfort
during the hour of the wolf
will slip from his grasp.
no beacon
no safe harbor
dead-eyed stranger in the mirror
old fool ground down by the days
slack skin staring into black
night after sleepless night
alone and drowning
in the far end of the pool.
Late last year, my biweekly men’s group decided that each of us would write his own obituary as a self-awareness exercise and bring it into the group for sharing and discussion. I wanted to write something grand that projected a wonderful future in which my struggles and sacrifices were validated and my dearest dreams came true in coming years, but for whatever reason, taking that approach did not feel authentic to me.
Creating a linear narrative with a list of accomplishments in the classic obituary format didn’t work for me either. As an alternative, I decided to approach the exercise as if my life had ended that very day and simply write whatever came to me in response to the event. Here is the result:
obituary 12-11-11
he was a horse of a different color
he was an army of one
he was a stone on a river bottom
he was a bird that fell out of the nest.
he was an A student
he was the smartest guy in the class
he was a tax deduction
he was a paycheck.
he was a castaway
a fugitive
a superhero
a cowboy
a jet pilot
a soldier
a time traveler
a family of astronauts
a secret identity.
he was an alien from another planet
who fell to earth.
he felt confused a lot
he felt like he didn’t belong
he felt like something was missing
he couldn’t wait to grow up
even after he grew up.
he fell in love with women
who didn’t love him back
he fell in love with women
who lied to him
he fell in love with women
who cheated on him
he fell in love with women
who didn’t appreciate him
he fell in love with women
who couldn’t see him
or let him be who he was.
he lived for 15 years without loving anyone at all (he never saw that one coming)
he kept trying
he got tired of trying
and sometimes he stopped trying
but he never stopped looking.
he wanted to help
he wanted to make a difference
he wanted everything to be better
for everybody
he couldn’t understand why people lied
so much and so often
when it took so little effort
to tell the truth
he couldn’t understand why people were
so mean to one another
when it took so little effort
to be kind.
he was a prisoner
he was a punching bag
he was a scapegoat
he was an exile.
he was a flower in a jar
a damaged romance
a beast in the night
a cave full of bats.
he put it all on the line
he gave everything he had
to everything he did
he lived at the edges of his edges
he fell many times
and was broken many times
in many ways
but he always got back up.
he was a sand castle in a tsunami
a beam of moonlight landing on a blade of grass
an erupting volcano
a still mountain stream
a quiet moment that passed
in the twilight.
now the wave that brought him here
has taken him back
he was ahead of his time
he was ahead of the pack
he was never sure he mattered at all
but he did.
For reasons I can’t fully articulate or even understand, this poem feels incredibly personal to me and I feel incredibly vulnerable, almost naked, sharing it. I declined to share it in the men’s group the first time we brought our obituaries in for discussion, saying I was unhappy with mine and planned to rewrite it. However, there was no rewrite because when I sat with the task, nothing else ever came through, and I finally decided that what I’d written must be what I was supposed to write at this time.
I would still like to write that rosy “dreams fulfilled late in life” obit, and maybe I will at some point, but I guess I had to write this one first.
I’ll be honest. Up until a day or so ago, I really hadn’t been paying close attention to the Penn State story. As an adult survivor of childhood abuse, I’m living and dealing with my own story every day. I don’t have to look to media for more.
I’ll be honest about something else, too. Just 24 hours ago, I’d never heard of Jon Ritchie. Then, yesterday afternoon, I happened to be channel flipping and ran across his conversation above with Bob Ley on the ESPN show Outside the Lines. Now Jon Ritchie is one of my favorite men. If you watch the video above, I think you’ll see why.
Jon speaks of his long history with Jerry Sandusky, a man he regarded as a role model, friend, and mentor from the time of their first meeting when Ritchie was 14 and Sandusky was recruiting him for the Penn State football program. Speaking about Sandusky, Jon says:
“I just felt like this man was so selfless, and so egoless, that he was what I aspired to be someday. And now, that foundation of what I thought was credible, and what I thought was important, and what I thought was good has crumbled. It’s decimated and it’s caused me to just reevaluate everything around me.”
A bit later, he says, “My whole lens has cracked.”
I understand exactly what Jon is saying because I’ve had a similar experience. Several years ago, I learned that an older man I’d known and admired my entire life, someone I’d loved and respected, someone with whom I’d spent countless hours as a child, had systematically sexually abused at least a dozen children over a period of around 25 years.
I was completely blindsided. I felt as if my entire world had been turned upside down. I’d never had any indication, not as a child and not as an adult, that anything so hideous was going on. He was, in my perception, one of the safest adults I knew as a child. I’d never received any inappropriate attention from him or heard of anyone else who had.
Shock is far, far too mild a word for what I felt and experienced in response to these revelations. As Jon says in the video, what I’d learned caused me to reevaluate everything. Not just my relationship with this man I’d trusted so much, my memories of my time with him, and my feelings about him, but everything. My sense of what I thought I knew and who I thought I could trust was ruptured down to the very root.
I was horribly disoriented for weeks, and it took a long time for me to come to terms with what I’d learned and to right myself again. Furthermore, I was unprepared to find that someone else I’d known and trusted all my life would do anything to protect this serial abuser’s reputation as a “great man”, to deny, to cover up, and to press his victims to keep the secret. This, to me, has been as appalling as the abuse itself, and has poisoned my relationship with that person as well.
Perhaps that’s why I’m so impressed with Jon Ritchie today. He could’ve taken the route of protecting, denying, and rationalizing on behalf of his long-time hero, or he could’ve simply stayed out of sight and kept quiet until things settled down. Instead he’s chosen to take the path of honor and integrity, to allow others to witness his walk through the flames.
I can see the deep pain in his eyes as he speaks, and I know it all too well. He’s obviously been shaken to the core. It’s not easy to accept that someone so close and so admired has done such awful things, much less to speak publicly about it so soon after finding out. Jon is sharing what is surely one of the most devastating experiences of his life in real time and in an incredibly transparent way.
The children who were molested and assaulted are the primary victims here, and that is where, as Jon says, the focus belongs. But Jon and others like him, who were close with Jerry Sandusky and saw him as a mentor, a hero, a role model, and a good man, are part of the collateral damage, secondary victims who’ve been deeply wounded by a horrific betrayal of trust and confidence that cuts to the bone and warps one’s sense of reality.
These men are in crisis, too. They’re feeling crazy, wondering how they could’ve been so thoroughly fooled for so long, and worrying that they somehow failed to pay sufficient attention to realize what was going on and stop it. They’re searching their own memories, wondering if maybe something happened to them as well, something they’ve somehow blocked out or rationalized away. Some are thinking they’re damn lucky it wasn’t them, and feeling guilty about the relief that comes with that. They’ve all been damaged and injured, too, certainly not in the same ways or to the same degree as the children who were molested and assaulted, but in ways that still matter deeply, and they’re going to need compassion, understanding, and time to heal as well.
If I could thank Jon in person for this brave, honest, articulate, and very moving interview, I would. I hope it’s widely seen and discussed. It’s an incredibly helpful, vital part of the conversation for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that, even in what must be one of the darkest moments of his life, Jon Ritchie is still showing us what it means to be a good man.
My article “Healing Is Not for Wimps” is now featured on the website for the Good Men Project. Here is an excerpt:
Sadness scares me. Grief, the experience of grief and grieving, scares me. But I also know that grieving, that being with grief and sadness, is one of the most powerful and effective ways of being with and transforming pain. When I let my grief and my sadness speak, when I allow those energies to stir in my belly and my chest, to move up through my heart and my throat, to enter the world as tears and moans and sobbing and wailing, I am cleansed. I am lifted. I can see again. I feel real again. Human.
But entering that process is challenging for me. It’s tricky. Sensitive. I almost have to be taken by surprise. Like so many men, I’ve been conditioned not to feel such things (not directly anyway) and certainly not to express them, not even privately. The messages are clear: “Be a real man. Take charge. Control yourself. Don’t cry. Be tough. Don’t be a wimp.” If you are a man who is suffering, keep it to yourself. If you have to feel something, feel angry. Anger is manly and therefore safe to feel. Grief and sadness are not.
Grief work is hard for many of us as men, and so much has to be learned (and unlearned) in order to do it. You have to be tough and soft at the same time, and you have to be present with what you’re feeling without losing yourself in the intensity of it. It’s not easy. Healing is not for wimps. The real tough guys are the ones who can do the work …
Zen in the Art of Photography, by psychotherapist and photographer Robert Leverant, is a gracefully tight articulation of philosophy and process that reads like poetry. This little book is beautiful in both appearance and content. It even feels good in my hands. I’m neither a photographer nor an expert on Zen, but I enjoyed this book nonetheless, and I think that says something about the universal truths contained within.
Many of the insights offered about the process of creating a photograph echoed my own experience as a writer and poet. Leverant speaks of photography as “an art of waiting” and “an art of listening.” If the photographer listens well enough, if he has developed sufficient discipline, the photo takes itself. I’ve often told others that I feel as if my poems write themselves, but this only happens when I’m able to give them the time and space they need to emerge.
The processes and philosophy in this book may be specific to photography, but I believe that anyone engaged in creative activity who reads it can gain some valuable insights into the value of waiting, listening, and allowing art, whatever the chosen medium, to find its own path.
“WAKING UP: Men Reclaiming Our Inspiration” is a 12-meeting study and process group for men in the Austin area that starts on August 31 and ends on November 16. The group will meet at Sol Associates in Austin and will be comprised of six members and two leaders, Steve Milan and Rupesh Chhagan. Here are the details:
WAKING UP: Men Reclaiming Our Inspiration
Would the boy you once were be inspired by the man you’ve become? – Nic Askew
This 12-meeting study and process group for men will explore the pathway to discovering our masculine gifts, and offering those gifts through our relationships, families, friendships and work. The group will be a place of refuge, challenge and acceptance where members will engage with new ideas about relating to ourselves, our partners and families, and our work in the world. As a process group, we will look at our interactions within the group as a reflection of our interactions with the world. As a working group, we will support each other in identifying and working through the challenges which keep us from living our lives more fully.
The primary work in meetings will be the focus on consciously finding our right relationship with ourselves, our lives, and each other. We will look at physical, spiritual, emotional, sexual, and psychological ways of offering our gifts to the world, and pathways to doing that. The group will do a small amount of reading each week from writings by David Deida, Rick Belden, Chogyam Trungpa and others to open up new areas for exploration of our full role in the world. We will explore mindfulness, and use this skill to explore barriers to true engagement with ourselves and our world.
This group will be comprised of six members and two leaders. All members will commit for the duration of the group. (It is understood that absences are unavoidable at times.) During the group, the leaders will offer experiential training on what is needed to develop and maintain an effective on-going, self-sustaining group. If there is interest, the foundation of this subsequent group will be established from interested men in the group with the support and consultation of the group leaders. After the initial stages of the new group, leaders will be available in a consultative capacity as needed.
Details When: 5:30 – 7:00pm on Wednesdays beginning August 31 and ending November 16 Where: Sol Associates, 3400 Kerbey Lane Group leaders:Steve Milan, LCSW and Rupesh Chhagan, LAc Cost: $50 per session payable at the start of each month. Discount available if paid in full in advance. If finances are the only barrier to joining, please contact us to discuss accommodations based on need.
Please call Steve at 589-5164 or Rupesh at 917-3404 to sign up or to get more information.
Signing Up: Anyone interested in participating must meet with Steve or Rupesh once before the group starts to assure that the goals of the group are clear, and that this group is an appropriate venue for this work. There is no cost for this meeting.
This is a great opportunity for men in the Austin area who are ready to explore the possibilities of deeper relationship with self and others in a safe, supportive environment, and I’m honored that some of my work will be included as a resource.
Father and son relationships are often fraught with tension and conflict, because of a failure to understand that a son must chart his own course, and must best his father in some way, in order to become a self-respecting equal with him in the world of men. Sons must not only be snatched away from mother’s apron strings, but must also decisively cease their dependence on or acquiescence to father. Many men, even in middle age, experience the continuing inertia of unrealized manhood because they are still preoccupied – often unknowingly, with lamenting an absent (or less than ideal) father, or living in their father’s shadow. There may be no simple formula for success in life, but there is a simple formula for failure: to betray and abandon the person we could become, and the life that we could have, in order to placate and please other people.
The decision to be ourselves and to be responsible for ourselves – to shape our own destiny, rather than living on the leftovers of someone else’s, is no small matter. It can be a frightening thing to take the first few steps into a future governed by our own volition and choices. But no other option can give us the dignity or manliness of a life that is, for better or for worse, uniquely and satisfyingly ours and ours alone.
Dr. Ashfield’s comments remind me of one of my favorite quotes, attibuted to Rudyard Kipling:
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
I’ve found, as Dr. Ashfield has written, that separating from my father, from both the man he was and the man I needed him to be, has been crucial to my coming into my own life as a mature man. It’s been a long process, a “hard business” as Kipling put it. It’s also been both necessary and well worth the time and the effort. I know there’s more work to do (there will always be more), but nearly 35 years after taking my first conscious steps out of my father’s life and into my own, I’m finally beginning to feel, in ways I never have before, that I am becoming a man at last.
Still I am, as Kipling said, “lonely often, and sometimes frightened,” frequently more so than I would prefer or care to admit, but I also have a tolerance and an acceptance of both of these states that I didn’t have even a few years ago. I understand now that standing up as a man in this world doesn’t guarantee me anything – not love, not success, not companionship, not fidelity, not health, not safety – and this understanding has liberated me, not from wanting all of those things, but from expecting them as some sort of reward for doing what I believe is right.
It is only by standing firm in my own authenticity and integrity that I can truly be fully present in this world and in my own life, with all of the inevitable pain, confusion, and disappointment that come to each one of us who lives. This is a lesson my father could not teach me, having never learned it himself, and I could only learn it by stepping out from the long, angry shadow he cast over my life as a child, a shadow that covered me like a second skin and nearly obliterated my life as a man.
